One of the finest actresses and most beautiful women to ever grace the screen:

:birthday: Natalie. She was very beautiful and she left us way too soon.

She was indeed - born July 20, 1938 in San Francisco and died November 29, 1981 off Catalina Island. Natalie was a great child actor who became a sensation as an adult actress. She did sing her own vocals in some of the movies she did (like Gypsy, Penelope and The Affair), but was dubbed in West Side Story.

In recent years, master tapes of Natalie's vocals from WSS were found. She doesn't sound bad at all, but Maria's vocals are probably the hardest to sing in that production - that's almost operatic stuff. Even pros like Sarah Brightman would have a tough time singing it. Natalie's range was limited and she just didn't have a strong enough voice to pull it off. I found some clips on YouTube of her singing - enjoy!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n26hnzcT7SU

http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=2057

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdsVGCjJlgg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSX0WewXzDw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5gvMuxxbFg

http://vimeo.com/3496258

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aobyyWoUWYI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIhtOFkhh3M

I haven't read it but I know that Robert Wagner released his autobiography Pieces of my Heart a couple of years ago.

I wonder if he mentioned about the accident at all in his book, since he and Christopher Walken have been very reluctant (understandably so) about talking about the details of the accident in interviews since.

I did read Robert Wagner's book when it first came out, as well as Marti Rulli's Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour - co-written with Dennis Davern, the captain of the Wagners' yacht. Two wildly different stories about that horrible night are told in these two books.

This was the first time Robert Wagner had gone into any detail about Natalie's death, and to my knowledge, Christopher Walken has never spoken publicly about it at all. I have a feeling that we'll never know exactly what happened that night. :(